howl
by grotesqueries
Summary: sasukarin- drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart. don't expect frequent updates.
1. apples, pomegranate fumes and regret

this is actually a part of a story i'm writing for my creative writing class. i started it off thinking about apples and pomegranates and _regret,_ because that's sasuke and karin in a nutshell, and then i realized it applied well to the c.w. piece. most questions should be answered as i build this up.

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><p>Once upon a time, when she was alive (living unmarred) and a certain older sister was missing (gone with the wind), a certain girl was loved most dearly by those she never wanted.<p>

The stench of fruit sneaks in from the kitchen, apples yellowing on the counter under the artificial glow of the flickering light. Yards away, he sits at the table, fingers drumming mercilessly on the standard-issue textbook paper that crinkles with every _badum _of his fingers.

It curls into his nostrils and he starts with a clash of chair hitting wall and breathes brokenly, in and out as he stumbles into the kitchen and his fingers grip the countertop. His obsidian gaze sweeps the cluttered countertop until, across the surface, right next above the compartment where the trash is kept, an apple sits. Silently, he steps over to it and pick it up, turning it over in his hand.

A set of teethmarks, fresh and leaking juice, glares back at him. The smell of pomegranates wafts up, overpowering and deceitful.

Whip fast, he pulls the trash compartment open and drops the apple into it, slamming it shut and sinking to the ground.

_No, _he thinks, curled up into himself on the sticky floor of his battered kitchen,_ she is gone, she _is (dead)(donefor)(finishedwithme) __**GONE**_._

(that night, he dreams of pulling the apple back from the abyss and sinking his teeth into it, ripping out its pomegranate innards. he can't stop all the bile from pouring out of his throat when he jolts up and into the bathroom. When he goes back to sleep, he dreams that _she _comes back and sews the apple together again.)

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><p>review or not, i don't really care. just don't flame, there's no point.<p> 


	2. eyes of cold fire that scorch your skin

this is something i wrote out today. it's not much, but i like the idea of karin and sasuke getting haunted by itachi's eyes and not being able to sleep at night because of them. the illusion factor that comes with itachi is really fun to play with.

also, i don't own naruto, if i did, i probably wouldn't be writing fanfiction for it.

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><p>She wakes up in a cold sweat, a panic, a complete fear that leaves her immobile. Her eyes stare into the abyss above her, barely making out the ceiling.<p>

Slowly, a pair of red tomoe flutters open above her, peering down curiously.

She screams right before she blacks out.

It happens countless nights after that. Sasuke's eyes, Itachi's eyes – always Itachi's. It happens and Juugo is the only one to actually see, because Suigetsu doesn't care and Sasuke can barely sleep himself. Juugo holds her up and she hyperventilates and _breathes _in his arms and he rubs her scars and tries to calm her while the only thing keeping him from freaking out is the fact that she is more important at that moment, because without her Sasuke has no purpose because he has no guide, and without guidance Sasuke is lost. Without Sasuke, Juugo collapses and Suigetsu goes rogue. Without Karin, they are apart, and with her, they are together, stuck like weakening glue.

Karin is the flickering candle in their darkness, and as Juugo looks down at her nightmare-ringed eyes, he sees a part of her light extinguish into smoke that curls up and around them.

"His eyes," she croaks one morning after as they eat their meager breakfast.

Sasuke looks up from his food to meet her gaze. "You too? Hn."

Her chopsticks clatter to the ground.

All in this together_ indeed._


	3. forgive and forget and destroy

oh man. i've been working on and off on this forever. i feel like it has a little bit of plot now, sort of? my idea is stemming from karin being taken to konoha, then suigetsu and juugo search for her because she's their candle oooooh and then um? he's lost without them, he realizes.

anyway, flower meanings!

cyclamens: resignation / good bye

dark crimson roses: mourning

dogwood: love undiminished by adversity

dahlias: instability

mixed zinnias: in memory/thinking of an absent friend

yellow carnations: rejection / you have disappointed me

withered flowers: rejected love

anemone: forsaken

sorry if juugo and karin are a little ooc, i'm out of practice.

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><p>The day after they find her, (after they clean her and heal her and give her a place to stay while they mercilessly interrogate her) they find her once again, in that very same place to stay.<p>

They find her, in the empty Haruno household – because it only makes sense to saddle the girl that was in love with the girl that still might be in love, no matter how it _hurts _to talk at night, because all they can talk about is _him_ and the way his eyes looked as he drifted off to sleep and the way he'd whimper ever so quietly – and by the end of the night she is curled there on her mat, her arms folded tightly around her abdomen as tears form in the corner of her eyes.

The others are unsurprised. Sakura was the same. Ino similar. At least, that's what the others say. They think it's stupid to be so caught up in something that betrayed them so, but underneath it all, they understand that losing things you deem important is a hard-hitting thing.

They are Suigetsu and Juugo and the others are Shikamaru and Ino, and they come bearing flowers, as if it'll help. Ino holds cyclamens and dark crimson roses with dogwood scattered in the cramped spaces between, like she still had hope for it all. Suigetsu tosses dahlias and mixed zinnias and she knows if Sasuke were around there would be yellow carnations. And withered flowers for them all.

Juugo whispers, always quiet, as he kneels.

"He is alive. Pay attention to the flowers." And even quiet in her ear, where only she and Suigetsu can hear: "We will rise from our ashes." (in retrospect, it is the wisest thing she thinks he's ever said.)

"Why are you here?" Karin croaks, clutching the flowers in her clammy hands.

"Because you're not alone, and we don't need the anemone yet, now do we?" Ino chirps, ever the optimist.

"What are those?" Juugo asks, still quiet as he rises.

"…" Ino glances around, biting her lip.

"Forsaken." Shikamaru drawls for her, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Karin sobs deep in her throat.

On the other side of fire country stands a lone man, sword gripped in pale hands that shake. He's never been gifted with tracking, but there is one chakra that is always clear to him, always bright and shining and eager to crawl into the spaces of his mind. One word, one name, slips from his lips, voice raw and broken, before he breaks into a dash, a trail of blood behind him.

Karin starts from her still fitful sleep with his name on her lips, because he is _there_ even though he is most certainly not, his black and grim and fated to fall chakra blazing all around her. "Why," she whispers, voice hoarse and desperate. "You stupid, idiotic avenger. This isn't you." And even though she speaks only to dead air, a weight of satisfaction rests on her bitten and bruised shoulders. "Avenge yourself," she cries, voice still quiet and hoarse and as _desperate_ as its ever been. (She will not forgive, she will not forget, and she will not cry. Not tonight.)

As Sasuke sleeps that night, he finds her voice and it almost brings tears to his broken eyes. (He does not realize how far he will go to achieve his will until he has burned all of his bridges and stands alone on a damned isle. That, not the cold air seeping into him or the searing pain that wracks him as infection sets in, is what bring him to the edge.)

He wakes up in a field of anemone, though that is no surprise. It is the very same flower that she grips in her hand the next day that brings her to tears. (She had not realized it, never wanted to realize it really, but even if he hurt her beyond forgiveness, she will forgive because he is all she has and they are both all the other needs.)

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><p>r&amp;r, brosephs.<p> 


	4. in thunder, lightning, or in rain

long time no update, eh? (inspired loosely by Macbeth and the three witches, but I bet you could tell that already.)

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><p>In a past life, Karin assumes she was doomed to die. She gets glimpses of a life gone past, of three witches in a tower, hovering around brews of steaming sickness, around a body, so pale and pristine in the moonlight even with blood on the windows. She remembers its eyes – sees them the most, the blood-stain red irises (splattered over cold onyx) boring into her wicked soul. She's woken up shivering more than once and it's been no comfort to again find no one beside her. (why would there be, really, she is a loner and a spinster and love is not meant for girls like her, with spindly fingers and scarred skin.)<p>

Sasuke knew he would die young when he was a boy. He was the youngest born to die before his time, with blood-red eyes and a curse that causes it. Like the werewolf that goes feral in the full moon, Sasuke is a man doomed to be a slave to his eternal curse, doomed to love one if not none, doomed to be alone. He does not dream. Dreaming requires undisturbed sleep, a pure mind, anything but what Sasuke advertises. (peace is not for him, either, he is turmoil incarnate, with storming eyes and emaciation rampant.)

They meet on the train. He's going uptown and she's just going to get food because again, her fridge is empty, and of all things, he sees the wicked eyes she hides behind frames.

"Your eyes," he begins, his hands curling around the cool metal of the subway poles. "What colour are they?"

"Maroon. Sometimes crimson if the light is right." Even in the way she speaks, rough and wary in the most welcoming way, is beautiful to him, like a revelation so demanding that he can scarcely remember what he could have possibly been doing with his life before "Why, got something to say about them just like everyone else?"

"No." he says shortly. "They're just familiar."

"Hn. What's so familiar about bloody eyes, hm, Mister?" Familiar to him, at least. Blood-razed eyes are old news to her. She crosses her legs as he begins to speak, his voice pitching and halting before evening out.

"There's an old tale, of a man deprived of true power, with such a hunger he will do anything. He stumbles upon three witches in the hills, three anxious women with ambitions too high and powers unattainable, but one, and one only, sparks his interest. The one, amongst pink and gold, with red all upon her. The other two, they distrust him once they peer inside of him, distrust him as they do the other witch for both bear a curse that cannot be cleansed. But the other, she sees his hunger for what it is – desire of the deepest kind. A searing loneliness. And this witch, she conspires to save him, to pull him from his circles of hell and make him anew. But the other two, they want nothing more than to string him up, for they have been falsely enamored by his wickedness for too long. They see a curse in him where the other sees a chance. The witches, they set a trap, they set the other witch aflame and bait the man in with the cries of agony the red one emits. And he comes, and he dies for the red one, for the one he thought was just another wolf in lamb's clothes, when really she was the wolf itself, bare and without need of disguise. He dies for power and of the witches three, the third one follows him into his darkness and they are reborn as the very things they desired, curses intact. And the red one, all she saw in her sleep was his death, so she scattered at her rebirth, far away, and left the other to find her for they were fated to be together as per their sacrifice. One sacrificed their eyes and the other sacrificed their skin because they thought it'd save the other." He takes a breath, his eyes blinking shut as Karin slowly lowers her hood to reveal her crimson hair. "That's why your eyes are familiar. My mother used to tell me that tale to scare me, and you remind me of the red witch."

"Does that make you the cursed man?" She recoils a little, her eyes meeting his and, of course, his eyes are the same onyx she sees in her dreams except clear, the red eyes that were splattered on a waxy body boiling underneath so vividly. "I'm Karin." She holds out a hand, her sleeve pulling back at the motion, and she prays, no, _begs _that he does not look down and see her skin, see the angry black marks that cover her skin.

He does, and his deliriously intoxicating gaze hits her like the very train they ride.

"Sasuke Uchiha," he says, shaking her hand firmly. She watches as his eyes spin, onyx unfurling to a terrifying crimson. "And I believe you and I have some thing to discuss over dinner."

Fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air.

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><p>read and review! (also, the last line is actually from macbeth. oh ho ho.)<p> 


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